Executive Insights: Amber Caramella of Infrastructure Masons

The Data Center Frontier Executive Roundtable features insights from industry executives with lengthy experience in the data center industry. Here’s a look at the insights from Amber Caramella of Netrality […]

The Data Center Frontier Executive Roundtable features insights from industry executives with lengthy experience in the data center industry. Here’s a look at the insights from Amber Caramella of Netrality Data Centers and Infrastructure Masons.

AMBER CARAMELLA, Netrality Data Centers and Infrastructure Masons.

Amber Caramella is the Chief Revenue Officer at Netrality Data Centers. She is responsible for Netrality’s revenue generation strategy and execution, including overseeing sales, marketing, strategic alliances, and channel partnerships. Amber has over 20 years of experience in the telecommunications and technology industries having held various positions in sales and leadership. Prior to joining Netrality, Amber served as Senior Vice President of Sales at Zayo, where she built the company’s global data center vertical team. She brings vast industry experience, previously holding a variety of sales and leadership roles at Level 3 Communications (now CenturyLink), XO Communications and Allegiance Telecom.

Amber is on the Advisory Council of Infrastructure Masons and is the Global Executive Sponsor for IM Women. She is also an active participant of the Women’s Tech Forum (WTF). Her goal is to promote diversity of women pursuing careers in technical infrastructure and data centers, to increase the visibility and the career advancement of women.

Here’s the full text of Amber Caramella’s insights from our Executive Roundtable:

Data Center Frontier: As digital transformation gains momentum, enterprises are managing more data in more places. How will the explosive growth of data (“data gravity”) impact the growth and geography of digital infrastructure in 2020?

Amber Caramella: There’s good news and bad news. The explosion of digital transformation will mean that digital infrastructure must continue to grow, particularly in the enterprise space. Hybrid IT environments are becoming the new normal, with many enterprises managing workloads in data centers, in the public cloud and at the edge. Data is also becoming more and more distributed. A business in the United States that hosts its website on the public cloud might also store customer information and backups across private cloud infrastructures in other countries. Cloud service providers will require more data center space to host their systems, necessitating the expansion of the colocation market.

However, infrastructure capabilities are not currently keeping pace with the business needs of digital transformation. The pace of change will only increase in 2020, as enterprises face continuous pressure to more rapidly create, deploy, manage and govern dynamic application environments. Infrastructure development, meanwhile, is hindered by a number of factors. The number and degree of infrastructure challenges varies by region, but the lack of adequate infrastructure to accommodate digital transformation is a global issue. There are several examples of companies strategically partnering together to address the problem with creative go-to-market solutions to improve the digital infrastructure landscape with new technologies and infrastructure in rural markets.

Data Center Frontier: There’s a lot of buzz about 5G wireless. What is the likely impact of the 5G rollout on the data center industry, and when will we see it begin to drive meaningful growth?

Amber Caramella: The excitement around 5G does not mean it will come seamlessly. Although 5G does live up to its hype when it comes to more bandwidth, faster speeds, and lower latency, we will need to rethink our infrastructure strategy to accommodate the unprecedented increase in data and networking demands. The need to bring compute power closer to the point of connectivity and the end user is driving demand for edge data centers in secondary and tertiary markets, like Netrality, that are rooted geographically close to the source of the data.

Since microsecond latency will no longer be optional in a 5G-empowered world, enterprises need to find a new way to meet these demands. Many of them are making the leap to 5G-enabled services by leveraging edge computing to limit the distance between the data source and the end user. As 5G makes edge computing a necessity, powering at the edge will require connections to geographically local interconnected data centers. The combination of 5G and edge computing will necessitate the processing of data at local nodes rather than a centralized data center or cloud. Edge computing will modernize the traditional data center by bringing compute and storage closer to the end-user. As edge computing expands, there will be growth in both core and edge deployments.

Before 5G can truly take off, many regulatory, spectrum licensing, infrastructure, and security issues must be resolved. 5G will therefore be deployed over a number of years, spreading more and more as updates to infrastructure are funded and completed, and regulations across the world are modernized. 5G will require a massive amount of new fiber and new transmission infrastructure, including thousands of cell towers and tens of thousands of antenna. Cisco has predicted that 5G’s impact will be tangible and significant by 2022. But Gartner predicts that by 2022, half of communications service providers that have been able to launch commercial 5G won’t be able to meet the 5G use cases companies want. So it’s yet to be determined.

The meet-me room inside the Netrality carrier hotel at 401 North Broad in Philadelphia., circa 2019 (Photo: Netrality)

Data Center Frontier: Last year several studies indicated that rack density level is increasing. How might the growing use of artificial intelligence and edge computing impact rack density and the world of data center cooling?

Amber Caramella: As artificial intelligence (AI) and edge computing proliferate, rack density will continue to increase. More data-intensive workloads naturally require more compute power, which increases the amount of electricity used by servers and the amount of heat the servers produce. This makes powering and cooling data centers more expensive and increases their carbon footprint.

Conventional data center cooling methods will not scale under the processing demands of AI, 5G wireless, Internet of Things (IoT), and the rise of Smart Cities. Luckily, there are a growing number of new approaches to cooling that actually reduce energy consumption and costs. As data center needs transform, dynamic infrastructure is needed to respond to high, mixed and variable power densities, enabling environments to evolve without stranding capacities. Newer cooling systems are being developed that are purpose-built for data centers.

These and other promising new cooling methods will be needed to ensure that data centers can keep up with data processing demands and become more green and sustainable.

Data Center Frontier: The data center industry is finally talking more about its diversity problem. How does this translate into real-world improvement in the representation of women in the industry? What are the concrete steps that can bring change?

Amber Caramella: By now, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that women continue to be underrepresented in the data center industry and are still underrepresented at technology conferences and on technology panels, which is a missed opportunity for thought leadership. The issue of the gender gap is not exclusive to the data center industry and spans across a breadth of STEM fields.

At a higher level, the issue is societal; STEM fields have a significant gender gap due to gender stereotypes regarding career opportunities that develop at a young age. The notion of gender-specific occupations has a monumental impact on how our impressionable youth envisions their future career opportunities, and has driven a declined interest in technology amongst high school females. Addressing the talent gap has to start with education at high school levels.

This is a systemic, cultural issue and will take time to overcome, but we are making progress. Practically speaking, the data center industry today is proactively working towards representing our industry and workforce in a more gender-balanced way, and raising awareness for the digital infrastructure industry by creating opportunities and providing strategies and tools to bridge the gender gap. Organizations are making a conscious effort to raise visibility around diversity and inclusion by driving key initiatives to correct many of the systemic issues, such as unconscious bias in the workplace.

For example, some companies are improving efforts with recruiting and hiring practices, correcting bias job descriptions, and training recruiters to have a balanced approach when presenting applicants. Retainment is also a key initiative for organizations. Female retention in the data center industry has been a challenge due to the lack of career advancement. Organizations are building mentoring and training programs to create career paths for women to enable career advancement.

Additionally, companies can partner with organizations such as Infrastructure Masons, which aim to increase the number of under-representative groups working in the digital infrastructure industry globally and to increase the visibility and career advancement of women currently working in technical infrastructure and data centers.

Diverse teams foster creativity and offer a range of perspectives and ideas that have proven to perform better. We can’t change the world overnight but we can begin to make progress if we’re mindful and proactive about the issue.